The Caretaker

Xcape Wellington (Lower Hutt, New Zealand)

Time limit: 60 minutes

Player limit: 2-8

Age limit: Under 14s require adult in the room

Difficulty: 6/10

Date visited: December 2025

This was the fifth of our 5 rooms in one day at Xcape — one of the highest rated escape room establishments in New Zealand — situated in Lower Hutt, about 15 minutes north of Wellington.

Here are my thoughts:

• All of Xcape’s rooms are highly rated, but this one was No. 1 on Morty in the Wellington region when I booked, so we saved it for last.

• This was another great creepy horror room; we liked it a little more than Asylum. That said, all of Xcape’s rooms were of excellent quality so it’s really just a matter of personal preference.

• The theming and set design were awesome. You start off in “the woods” outside the cottage of the eponymous “caretaker”, and it really looks and feels like it thanks to the realistic props and clever use of light and shadow. It’s a little less impressive once you’re inside, but overall the vibe was expertly crafted thanks to the lighting, sound, and superb tech.

• The puzzles, like in all their other rooms, were varied and moderately challenging, but reasonable. There was a fun but odd dexterity puzzle that I am ambivalent about. For starters, its presence made little sense in the room or the story. It’s one of those things where knowledge of how to operate a certain object would make things a lot easier, but you only have a limited number of attempts, and if you exhaust them all, the GM would simply have to bypass it manually (which happened in our case).

• Xcape utilised a hybrid hint system in which our GM could see and hear us at all times, and there was also a screen inside the room that showed our remaining game time and any hints the GM wanted to deliver.

• I think our brains were a little fried by the time we played this fifth and final game of the day, especially after a fried chicken and burger dinner. We ended up asking a clue on a fairly simple puzzle that had us slapping our foreheads once we realised what we had to do. We probably could have figured it out ourselves considering we finished with 20+ minutes to spare, but we were tired and couldn’t be bothered by that stage.

• My main complaint with the room was the audio in the intro video, which was really hard to hear. Cleaning up the sound and/or adding subtitles would have done the trick.

• I think we would have liked this room more had we not played Unholy Cottage at Scapegoats the day before, which was somewhat similar in that it also had a spooky cabin and realistic outdoor area. Ultimately, they are very different games, but the similarities did take away some of the wow factor.

• Out GM told us that the owners of Xcape purchased the venue next door and are in the process of building a brand new set of rooms that promises to be even bigger and better!

Escape time: 38 minutes and 47 seconds

Theming	Atmosphere	Puzzles	Creativity	Fun
A-	A-	B+	B+	A-

Verdict: With immersive theming, an unsettling atmosphere, and high production values all round, this was a very polished horror-thriller deserving of its high-ranking status on Morty.

OVERALL RANK:

H	E	Z	J
A-	B	A-	A-